There’s Boo, a gin-sipping parakeet with an encyclopedic knowledge of literature, and then there’s Tom, the ex-lawyer and gentleman scholar who keeps the beefeater’s topped up in her cup. Boo’s erudition and superior attitude are constants in Tom’s life, as is her annoyance with his imperfect memory. Their first meeting goes something like this: “Let’s get the prelims behind us in a hurry,” Boo said. “I’m a talking parakeet with settled opinions, and there’s no need to labor the point. Like most worthwhile folk, I talk a sight better with a stimulant aboard. Juniper juice is my potation of choice.” Thus begins a series of chats werein some startling facts about Jefferson Davis; Shakespeare’s personal sexuality; the lady lawyer who smoked a pipe and wrote superb detective stories; a noblewoman’s affair with a seventeen-year-old; Elizabethan bawdy humor; an embarrassing mistake by T.S. Eliot; and Dorothy Parker as a weekend guest are examined. This collection of humorous essays, covering a full range of literary and historical subjects, provides an astonishing array of little-known anecdotes and stories, all through a give-and-take dialogue with a stubborn uber-parakeet.